Apple Butter

So October 21 and 22 we made apple butter. The pictures of my grandparents and dad stirring were taken on the second day. That copper kettle is huge and you must constantly stir the apples. If even a little bit scorches, you have ruined the whole batch. This has been a family tradition of my grandpa's mothers for many years now. They used to have a big family get together, eat a big meal, and make loads of apple butter. The picture of Grace eating the apple was taken on the first day. That entailed peeling and coring all 6 bushels of apples. Just for those of you who don't know what a bushel is, one bushel of apples equals 56 pounds. After they are peeled and cored, we took them inside sliced them up in Grandma's fancy mixer with an attatchment, then we cook them down a bit. It just eliminates a lot of stirring the next day. Grace was having so much fun in the garage chasing apples around the floor. Then she would grab one and just chow down on it. She ate 2 apples like this. She was so cute. The first day we worked for about 8 hours, then the second day we stirred for about 7 hours then canned them up. The apples we used were really juicy, so the water cooked out of them quite a bit and we only got about 94 pints out of that whole 6 bushels. But all the work was well worth it, I love homemade apple butter.